Hundreds of thousands of computing devices are lost or stolen each year. For example, more than 600,000 laptops are reportedly lost or stolen each year in U.S. airports alone. Although many computing devices utilize encryption techniques (such as full disk encryption) in an attempt to prevent data stored on lost or stolen computing devices from being compromised, these encryption techniques may be unable to fully secure onboard data if a computing device is lost or stolen while in a power-saving or power-management mode.
For example, during some power-management modes (e.g., sleep states S1, S2, and S3), a computing device may preserve an encryption key within memory (such as random-access memory) located on the computing device. The encryption key may enable the computing device to encrypt and decrypt data stored in a storage device (such as a disk storage device) located on the computing device. Since the encryption key may remain within memory during some power-management modes, an attacker may be able to access the encryption key stored in memory and use the same to decrypt the encrypted data stored in the storage device.
Such a vulnerability may significantly weaken system security by potentially compromising sensitive information stored on lost or stolen computing devices. As such, the instant disclosure identifies a need for effectively protecting against the unauthorized access of encrypted data stored on a computing device while the device is in a power-saving or power-management mode.